Kātyāyana in the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra

One of my long time fascinations is with the Pali Kaccānagotta Sutta or Sanskrit Kātyāyana Sūtra. It survives in three versions: Pāḷi, Chinese, and Sanskrit. It is fairly well known that Nāgārjuna quotes a Sanskrit version of this text in his Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (MMK 15.7). It's less well known that a number of Mahāyāna Sūtras appear to quote this sūtra as well. Long term I would like to do a complete survey of how this text was used in Buddhism over time, but we can say that it forms an important link between Mahāyāna and Mainstream forms of Buddhism. Some very useful reading on this subject can be found in Salvini (2011). There is also some discussion focussed on MMK in Kalupahana (1986).

In this essay I'll translate and discuss a passage from the first chapter of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra and argue that it recapitulates the argument about dharmas from the Kātyāyana. The implication here is that Kātyāyana provides a conceptual continuity link between trends of Buddhism. It represents a truth about experience that is widely acknowledged by different Buddhist schools of thought.

In my next blog essay I'll be exploring some important ideas about the history of the early Mahāyāna. One thing that has emerged recently is that Mahāyāna texts were almost certainly composed orally and in Prakrit. In the case of the Aṣṭa we have physical evidence in the form of a birch bark manuscript, written in the Gāndhārī Prakrit in Kharoṣṭhī script and carbon dated to the first century CE (the mid-point for the probability curve is 79 CE). So the Sanskrit text is a translation. Aṣṭa might have been translated into Sanskrit as late as the 5th century CE. This undermines the claim of the Sanskrit version of Aṣṭa (or any Mahāyāna text) to be "the original". In some ways the early translations into Chinese might better represent the original text, though this is debatable. 

The passage that I want to explore is Chapter 1, section 19; Vaidya (1960). In Conze's translation (1973) this passage occurs on p.87-88. My translation is:

When that was said, the Bhagavan said this to Elder Śāriputra, "thus training, Śāriputra, the bodhisattva mahāsattva does not train in any dharma. What is the reason for it? For the dharmas do not exist in the way that the foolish, ignorant hoi polloi take them to exist."  

Elder Śāriputra said, "How then do they exist, Bhagavan?"  

The Bhagavan said, "They exist as though they don't exist. Not-being found in that sense they are said to be unfound (avidye). The foolish, ignorant hoi polloi are engrossed in them. All dharmas imagined by them are non-existing. Having imagined them, they are obsessed by the two extremes. They don’t know or see those dharmas. Therefore all dharmas they imagine are non-existing. Having imagined [the non-existing dharmas] the are engrossed in the two extremes; engrossed they rely on the observed object as a basis and imagine dharmas in the past, in the future, and in the present moment. Having imagined them they become engrossed in name and form. Non-existing all-dharmas are imagined by them. Imagining those non-existing all-dharmas, they do not know and do not see the path as it really is. Not knowing or seeing the path as it really is they don’t depart from the triple realm and do not awaken to the highest truth. They go by the name “fools”. They do not develop faith in the true dharma. The bodhisattva mahāsattva does not become engrossed in any dharma, Śāriputra."

Typically Conze manages to make this section paradoxical. He has dharmas both existing and not existing at the same time, which does not make sense on any terms. For Conze such non-sense is a way of pointing to a transcendent, ineffable truth that words are incapable of communicating. Supposedly, the contradiction temporarily confuses the rational mind (as conceived) and allows the intuitive mind (as conceived) to make an intuitive leap to the transcendent truth. There are many false assumptions here about the nature of reason^† and imagination. 

† See for example: Reasoning and Beliefs. (10 Jan 2014)

The important point of the Kātyāyana is that existence (astitā) and non-existence (nāstitā) are not terms that can be applied to dharmas qua mental objects. The typical Mahāyāna explanation, following the Two Truths doctrine is that dharmas both exist and do not exist. Kātyāyana makes sense, the Two Truths explanation does not. I believe that in this passage from Aṣṭa, the Kātyāyana argument about dharmas is being recapitulated in much the same terms, and with the same warning about what happens if we do get caught up in the dichotomy. In other words that this is in fact a tacit reference to Kātyāyana.

Perhaps it is worth rehearsing why the denial of existence and non-existence is accurate and not at all paradoxical. My starting point, as always, is to take the subject under discussion to be experience. Being naive realists, or what the text calls "foolish, ignorant hoi-polloi" (bālapṛthagjanā aśrutavanto), we have an experience and we imagine ourselves to be contact with something real, be it internal or external with respect to our first-person perspective. Ignoring what the experience implies about the world of sense experience, ignoring matters of ontology, the focus of the Kātyāyana is on the experience itself. Is the experience of an object an existing thing or a non-existing thing, irrespective of the nature of the object? Clearly the answer is that it is neither. An experience cannot be described in terms of existence or non-existence. It arises, lingers for a short time, and then passes away. But the experience itself is entirely internal to us. Two people may see the same object and agree on it's characteristics. But their experience of it is individual and cannot be agreed on. And thus Conze, in affirming both existence and non-existence, has come to precisely the opposite conclusion because he seeks a transcendent truth behind the words; a noumenon of the text. Conze's Romanticism has a Platonic flavour to it.

The answer that an experience is neither existent nor non-existent is important because it is the understanding the nature of experience that has soteriological value. We say that "things" are arising and passing away, but the Buddhist texts seem to refer mainly (if not solely) to the arising and passing away of experiences. In the Kātyāyana it says that only dukkha arises and only dukkha cease. The same point is made in the Simile of the Chariot. Dukkha here is a synonym for unenlightened experience. This search for understanding is deprecated by Conze, by modern Zen commentators, and many Tibetan lamas, because they too believe in a transcendent truth that requires the suspension of reason (as they conceive reason). In the Spiral Path texts the experience of liberation (vimutti) is initiated by becoming fed up  (nibiddā) with the objects of the senses, i.e. with the intoxicating play of experience. Suspension of reason is not a prerequisite for awakening in these texts.

Central to Buddhist soteriology is the fact that our sense of self, our first person perspective, is also an experience and partakes in the nature of all experiences. Streams of sensory information converge and are woven together to create the persistent illusion of being a self. Though of course we know that the illusion of the first-person perspective can be broken by drugs, trauma, brain injury, and of course by meditation. In this view, insights consist of seeing experience, particularly the first person experience, in such a light that it ceases to intoxicate and fascinate. The word for 'insight', vipassana, literally means to 'see through', not as our translation suggests, 'to see into'. 

In our naivete about experience we imagine each experience signifies something real and we respond to it as though it were real. But in addition to this we are burdened with ideas about what constitutes happiness as the goal of our lives. The unenlightened, the bālapṛthagjanā aśrutavanto, believe, deep down inside, that happiness is about having pleasant experiences and avoiding unpleasant experiences. Maximising the former and minimising the latter seems to be the operational definition of happiness. If we can only arrange things so that we have the optimum amount of both then we will be happy and free of unhappiness. For most of us this means living in a unsatisfactory compromise and a lot of self-delusion about how happy we really are. Our pleasures do not satisfy. Our pains are all too many and not the least of them is mortality!

The line of thought in the Kātyāyana is often mixed up with attempts to apply dependent arising to all kinds of other processes, particularly karma and rebirth. And I have showed how this leads to inconsistencies and incoherent statements about the nature of the world across a number of essays (see the Afterlife tab for a list). Many Buddhists end up believing that the impermanence of "things" (e.g. tables, chariots, or other physical objects) is the key teaching of Buddhism, when it's just a truism that everyone is already aware of (See Everything changes, but so what?). The Kātyāyana is one of the texts where the intent of the idea, by which I mean the application to experience and only experience, is apparent. And it was this intent that was, I argue, taken up by the Aṣṭa and by Nāgārjuna some centuries later. Although there are many loud voices arguing about what Nāgārjuna meant to say in his very confusing opus, with most of them seeing Mūla-madhyamaka-kārikā as having deep ontological implications. I say that in citing the Kātyāyana in the way that he does, we might understand his ideas better if we take the domain of application to be experience and forget about ontology. Nāgārjuna makes better, if not perfect, sense if we take him to be someone commenting on the phenomenology of experience rather than speculating about metaphysics. 

In the Aṣṭa version of the idea, the author has chosen to use the words that are tricky to translate while retaining the connotations of the original. So in a key passage (Aṣṭa 1.19.4) the Buddha says to Śāriputra:

na hi te śāriputra dharmāstathā saṃvidyante yathā bāla-pṛthagjanā aśrutavanto 'bhiniviṣṭāḥ | āyuṣmān śāriputra āha - kathaṃ tarhi te bhagavan saṃvidyante? bhagavān āha - yathā śāriputra na saṃvidyante, tathā saṃvidyante evam avidyamānāḥ | tenocyante avidyeti | 

"For the dharmas do not exist (na saṃvidyante) in the way that the foolish, ignorant hoi-polloi take them to exist (abhiniviṣṭāḥ)." 

Elder Śāriputra said, "How then do they exist (saṃvidyante), Bhagavan?" 

The Bhagavan said, "They exist as though (yathā) they don't exist. Not-being found (avidyamāna) in that sense (evaṃ), they are said to be unfound (avidyā)." 

The last statement in the Sanskrit text is:

yathā śāriputra na saṃvidyante, tathā saṃvidyante evam avidyamānāḥ | tenocyante avidyeti |

Conze translates "As they do not exist, so they exist. And so, since they do not exist [avidyamāna], they are called [the result of] ignorance [avidyā]", employing his usual hermeneutic of obscurity. He also translates avidyamāna as "do not exist", but avidye as "ignorance", but by his own logic the latter ought to mean 'not existing'.

Saṃvidyante is a passive form from sam√vid. Conze translates as ‘exists’. BHSD defines it as "is found, exists’ (=vidyate ‘is found; often virtually = asti)." PED saṃvijjati² ‘to be found, to exist’. MW ‘know, recognise; perceive; approve’. It's tricky because there are two homonyms √vid meaning 'to know' (cognate with our word 'wisdom') and √vid meaning 'to find'. The two are indistinguishable except by context. The same goes for vidyamāna, a present participle 'knowing, finding' (here negated by the prefix a-). The other word here is abhiniviṣṭāḥ (abhi+ni√viṣ) which has a range of meanings 'entered or plunged into; intent on, endowed with; determined, persevering). Conze (1973a) suggests "settled down in, is accustomed to suppose."

So Conze is treating almost all the verb forms as meaning "exists". And we ought to point out that if a Sanskrit author wished to assert the existence of something they can do so very directly with the verb asti or some variation on √vṛt. So we need to be alert here to connotations. I think that √vid as found is relevant here. So say that if we go looking for a dharma is it not found, is not the same as saying it means it does not exist. We certainly have experiences, and so to that extent they do sort of exist. But when we say they "exist" we mean only that we have an experience, not that some kind of really existent entity has arisen and persists. Clearly the author of the Aṣṭa has some very like the Kātyāyana teaching in mind. And the consequences is similar in the sense that it leads to two extremes of thought: that dharmas either exist or do not exist and all the problems that this causes. And note that the Two Truth argument adopts both extremes rather than avoiding either of them. Compare Aṣta 1.19.7:

kalpayitvā dvāv antāv abhiniviśante abhiniviśya tan nidānam-upalambhaṃ niśritya atītān dharmān kalpayanti, anāgatān dharmān kalpayanti, pratyutpannān dharmān kalpayanti te kalpayitvā nāmarūpe 'bhiniviṣṭāḥ | 

Having imagined [the non-existing dharmas] they are engrossed (abhiviviśante) in the two extremes (dvāv antāv); being engrossed (abhiniviśya) they rely on the observed object as a basis and imagine dharmas in the past, in the future, and in the present moment. Having imagined them they become engrossed in name and form. 

Note the recurrence of abhini√viṣ here, translated as 'engrossed' this time (and as "settled down" by Conze). Taking dharmas to be real, settling into a view, we make mistakes about the nature of experience and by implication suppose that sense experience can be ultimately satisfying. And this is categorically a mistake. 

It has been argued that the Aṣṭa contains no direct reference to the Sarvāstivādin doctrine of sarva-asti (always existent), but Aṣṭa 1.19.7 might be just such a reference. Here the deluded people imagine (kalpayanti) that dharmas exist in the past, future and present. This is precisely what Sarvāstivādins believe. If we recall the problem of Action at a Temporal Distance this 'always on' feature of dharmas was the Vaibāṣika solution to the disconnect between action and result in time that the the doctrine of karma requires. It earned the Vaibāṣikas the nick-name Sarvāstivāda. However after examining two of the early translations T224 《道行般若經》by Lokakṣema (179 CE) and T227 《小品般若經》by Kumārajīva (408 CE) both make the point about the two extremes, but neither of them have this passage about past, future and present. So we must conclude that it was interpolated into the Sanskrit text at a later date. So if criticism of Sarvāstivāda was intended, it was not part of the original intention. Kumārajīva's translation of the dvāv antāv 'two extremes' is prosaically 二邊 'two extremes', whereas Lokakṣema has the more interesting 兩癡耳 literally 'two insane ears'.

Taking the text on face value, the criticism of the two extremes (existence and non-existence) is tilted towards criticising existence. Presumably precisely because the existence view was prevalent at the time. If this interpretation is correct then it may help explain the idiom in the next sentence (1.19.8)

tair asaṃvidyamānāḥ sarvadharmāḥ kalpitāḥ |

All dharmas imagined by them are non-existing.

Kalpita is a past participle from √kḷp. The literal meaning is 'made, fabricated'. I'm presuming here that the fabrication is a mental one. There's not really a word for "imagination" in Sanskrit (one of many differences in how they understand mind). Again the idea here seems to be that one has an experience and in the way of naive realism mistakes it for something more substantial than it is. And when we treat experiences this way it obscures the Buddhist path or as Aṣṭa puts it yathābhūtaṃ mārgaṃ na jānanti na paśyanti 'Not knowing or seeing the path as it really is...'

Interestingly in 1.19.12 the wrong view is seen as an impediment to the development of faith in the truth of the dharma (satyaṃ dharmaṃ). This suggests that the mistake is foundational and must be sorted out right at the beginning of the religious life. My sense is that most modern Buddhism is already lost in speculation about ontology and supernatural forces. As Justin Whitaker recently pointed out to me ,most Buddhists and scholars still invoke some variation of "seeing reality as it is" when describing Buddhist soteriology. But reality implies existence. Whatever we see as it is (yathābhūta), it cannot be described in terms of existence or non-existence and therefore is neither real nor unreal. Reality can have nothing to do with Buddhist soteriology by definition. To be real whatever it is would have to be permanently existing and I don't think I need to explain why that is a problem.

I hope I have showed that at the very least the author of Aṣṭa had Kātyāyana in mind as they were writing this section. I think this shows that at least at the beginning of producing the Prajñāpāramitā texts the authors saw the domain of application of the Dharma as experience. They were not caught up in the metaphysical speculations of the Ābhidharmikas. They were however caught up in their own metaphysical speculations about the nature of the Buddha, though that is a story for another time. The importance of this discovery is that it helps us to understand the apparently paradoxical texts of the Prajñāpāramitā literature. In flirting with paradox they were trying to describe an attitude towards experience that had a liberating effect. They did not set out to confuse the reader, but to draw attention to our suppositions about experience and reality. The former we can know and understand, the latter we can only make inferences about, based on the commonality of experience with reference to the same object.

A first step in reforming modern Buddhism would be to establish the domain of application of our theory and practice, and in such a way as our theory and practice were complimentary. Despite all the bitching from Buddhists about the Mindfulness Therapy movement I think they have a much better handle on this focus and integration of theory and practice. Better to be working with experience in a shallow way than to have a deep engagement with the kind of ontological speculation that typifies contemporary Buddhists discourse, because the latter is not beneficial in any way while the latter at least is mildly beneficial and creates a basis for progress.

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

Conze, Edward. (1973). The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines and its Verse Summary. San Francisco: City Lights.

Conze, Edward (1973a) Materials for a Dictionary of Prajñāpāramitā Literature. Suzuki Research Foundation.

Drewes, David (2009). Early Indian Mah ay ana Buddhism I: Recent Scholarship.Religion Compass 4/2 (2010): 55–65, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2009.00195.x. https://www.academia.edu/9226456/Early_Indian_Mahayana_Buddhism_I_Recent_scholarship

Kalupahana, David J. (1986) Nāgārjuna, The Philosophy of the Middle Way: Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. SUNY.

Salvini, Mattia. (2011) The Nidānasamyukta and the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā: understanding the Middle Way through comparison and exegesis. Thai International Journal of Buddhist Studies.II: 57-95. https://www.academia.edu/1925584/The_NidÄnasamyukta_and_the_M_lamadhyamakakÄrikÄ_understanding_the_Middle_Way_through_comparison_and_exegesis

Vaidya, P.L. (1960) Astasahasrika Prajnaparamita. Darbhanga: The Mithila Institute. (Buddhist Sanskrit Texts, 4). http://fiindolo.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/1_sanskr/4_rellit/buddh/bsu049_u.htm

Sanskrit text 

Aṣṭa 1.19. (Vaidya 1960)

evamukte āyuṣmān śāriputro bhagavantam etad avocat – evaṃ śikṣamāṇo bhagavan bodhisattvo mahāsattvaḥ katamasmin dharme śikṣate? evam ukte bhagavān āyuṣmantaṃ śāriputram etad avocat evaṃ śikṣamāṇaḥ śāriputra bodhisattvo mahāsattvo na kasmiṃś cid dharme śikṣate | tatkasya hetoḥ? na hi te śāriputra dharmāstathā saṃvidyante  yathā bāla-pṛthagjanā aśrutavanto 'bhiniviṣṭāḥ | āyuṣmān śāriputra āha - kathaṃ tarhi te bhagavan saṃvidyante? bhagavān āha - yathā śāriputra na saṃvidyante, tathā saṃvidyante evamavidyamānāḥ | tenocyante avidyeti | tān bālapṛthagjanā aśrutavanto 'bhiniviṣṭāḥ | tair asaṃvidyamānāḥ sarvadharmāḥ kalpitāḥ  | te tān kalpayitvā dvayor antayoḥ saktāḥ tān dharmān na jānanti na paśyanti | tasmāt te 'saṃvidyamānān sarva-dharmān kalpayanti | kalpayitvā dvāv antāv abhiniviśante abhiniviśya tan nidānam-upalambhaṃ niśritya atītān dharmān kalpayanti, anāgatān dharmān kalpayanti, pratyutpannān dharmān kalpayanti te kalpayitvā nāmarūpe 'bhiniviṣṭāḥ | tairasaṃvidyamānāḥ sarvadharmāḥ kalpitāḥ | te tān asaṃvidyamānān sarvadharmān kalpayanto yathābhūtaṃ mārgaṃ na jānanti na paśyanti | yathābhūtaṃ mārgam ajānanto 'paśyanto na niryānti traidhātukāt, na budhyante bhūtakoṭim | tena te bālā iti saṃjñāṃ gacchanti | te satyaṃ dharmaṃ na śraddhadhati | na khalu punaḥ śāriputra bodhisattvā mahāsattvā kaṃcid dharmam abhiniviśante ||

PS. If any one has a pdf of Conze's Sanskrit edition of Aṣṭa I'd love to get a copy.

Nirvāṇa Sūtra, Madhyāgama 55.

This blog post is an old one I've held in reserve for a week when I can't make the Friday morning deadline The Pali counterpart to this text, the Upanisā Sutta (SN 12.23), is a very important text for the Triratna Buddhist Order. Sangharakshita, following pointers provided by Mrs Rhys Davids, found this sutta and from as early as the 1950s made it a core text for his teaching. The main idea he called the Spiral Path. An account of the doctrine of the Spiral Path was included in the first edition of his A Survey of Buddhism in 1954. Later other teachers, such as Bhikkhu Bodhi and Ayya Khemma also took an interest in this text, though the true significance of the Spiral Path is seldom seen outside of the Triratna Movement. 

The Chinese counterpart, translated into English by myself for the first time (back in 2012), is very similar in many ways to the Upanisā Sutta. It shows an element of standardisation with the other Spiral Path texts which are compiled in the 5th section of the Chinese Madhyāgama (MĀ) translation. The MĀ is different from it's Pāḷi counterpart in that it collects many Spiral Path texts together that are scattered about the Nikāyas. I've prepared draft translations of all of these texts (MĀ 42-55) though these have now been superseded by the Numata Foundation translation of the Madhyāgama under the editorship of Bhikkhu Anālayo. However, though the first volume has been published, it is very expensive and thus unlikely to be accessible to ordinary Buddhists. Hence my translations remain useful for now. At some point it would be useful to produce a comparative study of the Pāli and Chinese versions of the Spiral Path texts. 

A reminder that I have already completed a comprehensive survey of the Pāḷi Spiral Path texts which was published in the Western Buddhist Review. 

Nirvāṇa Sūtra.

Madhyāgama 55 [1] Corresponding Preconditions Section. Taisho Vol. 1 no.26.


Chinese Translation by Gautama Saṅghadeva between 397-398 CE. [2]
English Translation by Jayarava Aug 2012

English Translation

Thus have I heard, one time the Buddha was staying in Śravāsti ( 舍衛國 shěwèiguó ), at the Jeta Grove 勝林 of Anāthapiṇḍika’s park 孤獨園. Then the Bhagavan addressed the monks: "nirvāṇa (涅槃 nièpán) has a precondition (習xí [3] Skt. upaniṣad) and does not lack a precondition. The precondition for nirvāṇa is liberation (解脫 jiětuō Skt. vimokṣa).

Liberation also has a precondition and does not lack a precondition. What is the precondition of liberation? Cessation of desire (無欲; Skt. virāga) is the precondition of liberation.

Cessation of desire also has a precondition and does not lack a precondition. What is the precondition of cessation of desire? Disillusionment (厭 yàn; Skt. nirveda) is the precondition.

Disillusionment also has a precondition and does not lack a precondition. What is the precondition of disillusionment? To see reality and know things as they are (見如實 知如真. jiànrúshí zhīrúzhēn; Skt yathābhūta-jñānadarśana [4] ) is the precondition.

To see reality and know things as they are has a precondition and does not lack a precondition. What is the precondition of seeing reality, and knowing things as they are? Samādhi (定 dìng) is the precondition.

Samādhi also has a precondition and does not lack a precondition. What is the precondition of samādhi? Bliss (樂 lè; Skt. sukha) is the precondition.

Bliss also has a precondition and does not lack a precondition. What is the precondition of bliss?

Calming down (止 zhǐ; Skt. praśrabdha) is the precondition.

Calming down also has a precondition and does not lack a precondition. What is the precondition of calming down? Rapture (喜 xǐ ; Skt. pīti) is the precondition.

Rapture also has a precondition and does not lack a precondition. What is the precondition of calming down? Joy (歡悅 huānyuè; Skt. prāmodya) is the precondition.

Joy also has a precondition and does not lack a precondition. What is the precondition of joy?

Non-regret (不悔 bù huǐ; Skt. avipratisāra) is the precondition.

Non-regret also has a precondition and does not lack a precondition. What is the precondition of non-regret? Morality (護戒 Hù jiè; Skt. śila) is the precondition.

Morality also has a precondition and does not lack a precondition. What is the precondition of morality? Guarding the sense faculties (護諸根 Hù zhūgēn; Skt. gupta indriya? [5] ) is the precondition.

Guarding the sense faculties also has a precondition and does not lack a precondition. What is the precondition? Right mindfulness (正念 zhèng niàn Skt. samyak-smṛti), attentiveness (正智 zhèngzhì; Skt. saṃprajāna) [i.e. the eightfold path] is the precondition.

Mindfulness and attentiveness also has a precondition and does not lack a precondition. What is the precondition? Wise attention (正思惟 zhèng sīwéi; Skt. yoniśo manasikāra) [6] is the precondition.

Wise attention also has a precondition and does not lack a precondition. What is the precondition?

Faith (信 xìn; Skt. śraddhā) is the precondition.

Faith also has a precondition and does not lack a precondition. What is the precondition? Suffering (苦 kǔ; Skt. duḥkha) is the precondition.

Suffering also has a precondition and does not lack a precondition. What is the precondition of duḥkha? Old age and Death (老死 lǎosǐ; Skt. jarāmaraṇa) are the precondition.

Old age and death also have a precondition and do not lack a precondition. What is the precondition of old age and death?  (生 shēng; Skt. jāti) is the precondition.

Birth also has a precondition and does not lack a precondition. What is the precondition of birth?

Becoming (有 yǒu; Skt. bhava) is the precondition.

Becoming also has a precondition and does not lack a precondition. What is the precondition of birth?

Sensation (受 shòu; Skt. vedanā) is the precondition.

Sensation also has a precondition and does not lack a precondition. What is the precondition of sensation? [7] Desire (愛 ài; Skt. kānti; cf. 貪欲 tānyù; Skt. tṛṣṇā) is the precondition.

Desire also has a precondition and does not lack a precondition. What is the precondition of desire?

Contact (覺 jué; Skt. sprśati) is the precondition.

Contact also has a precondition and does not lack a precondition. What is the precondition of Contact?

Contact food [8] (更樂 gènglè; Skt. sparśo āhāra) is the precondition.

Contact food also has a precondition and does not lack a precondition. What is the precondition of contact food. The six sense faculties (六處 liù chù; Skt. sadāyatana) are the precondition.

The six sense faculties also have a precondition and do not lack a precondition. What is the precondition of six sense faculties? Name & form (名色 míng sè; Skt nāmarūpa) are the precondition.

Name & form also have a precondition and do not lack a precondition. What is the precondition of name & form? Awareness (識 shi; Skt. vijñāna) is the precondition.

Awareness also has a precondition and does not lack a precondition. What is the precondition of awareness? Constructs (行 xíng; Skt. saṃskāra) are the precondition.

Constructs also have a precondition and do not lack a precondition. What is the precondition of

constructs? Ignorance (無明 wúmíng; Skt. avidyā) is the precondition.

Ignorance is the cause (緣 yuán; Skt. pratyaya) of constructs; constructs cause awareness; awareness causes name & form; name & form causes the six sense faculties; the six sense faculties cause contact food; contact food causes contact; contact causes desire; desire causes sensation; sensation causes becoming; becoming causes birth; birth causes old age and death; old age and death cause suffering;

With suffering as a precondition there will be faith. With faith as a precondition, there will be wise attention. With wise attention as a precondition, there will be mindfulness & attentiveness. With mindfulness & attentiveness as a precondition there will be guarding the senses; morality; non-regret; joy; rapture; calming down; bliss; integration (samādhi); knowing and seeing things as they are; disgust; cessation of desire; liberation. With liberation as cause there will be nirvāna.

This is what the Buddha said. The bhikkhus heard and they all rejoiced.

---

[1] T01n0026_p0490c01(00)- T01n0026_p0491a13(00). "*Nirvāṇa Sūtra, the 55th sutra of T.99 中阿含經 *Madhyāgamasūtra" Note from  my friend Maitiu O'Ceileachair , henceforth [MO’C]

[2] This sūtra is the counterpart of the Pāli Upanisā Sutta (S 12.23). "Most of the other Sutras in this section deal with the same topic but they don't all give the the same chain. Sutras 42, 43, 47, and 50 give the chain from observing the precepts to nirvāṇa. Sutras 45 and 46 give a similar chain that starts with hrī and apatrāpya. Sutra 44 gives a chain starting with *saṃyagjñāna, saṃyaksaṃkalpa. Most of them are very short and give little more than lists of the links in the chain. Sutra 55 is probably the most detailed." [MO’C]

[3] 習 xí "usually means ‘to practice or become accustomed to’ and the only place I've seen it used to mean ‘cause or condition’ is in this sutra and the other sutras in this section of T.99." [MO’C] Here is stands for upaniṣad (Pāli upanisā) in the sense of underlying condition, or precondition. Bodhi uses the phrase ‘proximate condition’ in his translation of the Upanisā Sutta.

[4] Cf. 見 ‘see; darśana’; 如實 ‘reality, truth’, yathābhūta; 知 jñāna; 如真 yathābhūta, tathatā; hence "to see reality, and know things as they are".

[5] 諸根 zhūgēn = indriya; 護 = ‘protect, guard’ and used to translate Skt. gupta as well as rakṣita, pāla and pālita. Perhaps Skt. indriyagupta? Cf. 守護根門 Shǒu hùgēn mén ‘guarding the sense gates’.

[6] This combination of characters is also used for samyak-samkalpa right-intention.

[7] Note that sensation and desire are given in reverse order in the Chinese text. This would seem to be a scribal error.

[8] I can’t find 更樂 per se, but Digital Dictionary of Buddhism has  "更樂食 (simplified 更乐食) [gēnglè shí] ‘sensory food’". In Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra (Translated Chapters)  By Maitreya Bodhisattva.  Buddha Education Foundation, 2012. http://buddhavacana.net/yogacarabhumi-sastra/  "Sensory food 觸食／樂食: the nourishment that one takes through the contacts of the six senses". (p.47) The collective term for the four kinds of food is catvāra āhārāḥ. In the Yogacarabhumi [manobhūmidvitīyā]  itself we find "| te punaścatvāra āhārāḥ | kavaḍaṅkāra āhāraḥ sparśo manaḥsañcetanā vijñānañ ca | http://dsbc.uwest.edu/manobhūmidvitīyā. The idea of contact as food occurs in the Pāli (See Nyanaponika 1981. ‘The Four Nutriments of Life: An Anthology of Buddhist Texts.’ Wheel Publication. No. 105/106 Buddhist Publication Society). But it is used very differently. In Pāli contact is nourishment; here contact-nourishment is a precondition for contact.

~~oOo~~

Unresolvable Plurality in Buddhist Metaphysics?

image: Indiwall

In discussion over my forthcoming article describing changes in the metaphysics of karma, I raised the problem of the moral force of karma in the absence of personal continuity. An interlocutor responded that the tradition had resolved this problem, but I'm convinced this is not the case. I think this problem is decidedly unresolved. Most writing on the subject of karma assumes that a unified view is intended and can be discovered in the early Buddhist texts, but I see plurality that seems unresolvable.

One specific problem is this. The moral force of karma derives from the notion that we must live with the consequences of our actions and that even death is no barrier to the consequences being visited on us (or someone linked to us in a way we care about). It is fundamentally fear of negative consequences, particularly a bad rebirth, that pushes the unawakened Buddhist to be ethical; and the prospect of liberation from repeated death that pulls them along. This implies that the person who lives out the consequences of my present actions must in some way still be me. I must feel a sense of ownership over my actions and their consequences. In other words karma implies some kind of personal continuity or it doesn't make sense in human terms.

I'm well aware that this is specifically denied in texts such as the Milindapañha. According to tradition the one who experiences the results is not the same as the one who acted, but not different either. That person is dependently arisen (I'll come back to this). However if this was intended to make people behave according to Buddhist norms I can't help thinking that it's a rather poor attempt at motivating people. Theoretically the problem is solved, but practically it still disconnects the actor from both their actions and the consequences and thus can hardly motivate anyone to do anything.

Teachings on karma emphasise this implication by telling stories which explicitly link past and present lives. Such stories as the many hundreds of Jātakas (both in the two books of the Pali Jātakas and spread throughout the Nikāyas, Vinaya and other collections such as the Avadāna). In Theravāda countries the Jātakas are the main vehicle for teaching morality precisely because they emphasise living with the consequences of actions performed in part lives. However this is not to say that karma is only presented in these terms in Buddhist texts. Compare also such texts as SN 15.1 which describes saṃsāra in terms of ancestors stretching back through beginningless time; and SN 15.10 which by contrast describes one person (ekapuggala) wandering through saṃsāra leaving a mountainous pile of bones behind them. Karma is also said to be quite specific. My actions determine my rebirth, they do not determine your rebirth and vice versa. Similarly your actions do not give rise to my suffering except where they directly impact on me. But direct impact is unnecessary for karma generally since it is intention that determines outcome for the actor. 

Now contrast the metaphysics of paṭicca-samuppāda applied to the sense of selfhood. For the most part Buddhists seem to insist that, in reality, there is no self. There is a strong influence of the Two Truths teaching in such statements which use the language of existence or non-existence, i.e. the language of ontology. The Two Truths are a pervasive tool for dealing with the paradoxes  and contradictions thrown up in Buddhist ontology. However if there is no self, then there is no continuity over time and Buddhist ethics simply does not work. The language of ontology is carefully avoided in many early Buddhist texts that emphasise the application of paṭicca-samuppāda to experience only (the locus classicus being the Kaccānagotta Sutta SN 12.15) which is why I do not find the Two Truths teaching, with a foot in the camp of existence, useful (See Not Two Truths).

But even if we reject the language of ontology as belonging to the wrong domain (avisaya; cf. the Sabba Sutta SN 35.23) we are still left with a denial of personal continuity. The one who is reborn is not the same as the one who died, though not different either – they arise in dependence on causes. As Nāgasena says to king Milinda when asked about this problem: “It is not he, nor is it another” (na ca so, na ca añño. MP 41; c.f. S ii.18ff). The idea that vedanā arises because of oneself or another simply misunderstands how experience arises. Indeed the very question "who suffers?" is deemed unsuitable (no kallo) (SN ii.13). This is clear enough. But it's not clear how morality would work on this basis. If it is not me that suffers (or enjoys) the consequences of my actions then what is my motivation for practising virtue and avoiding vice? I don't believe that a morality based on such an abstract notion of responsibility is viable. And I would argue that the Buddhist tradition, in a tacit acknowledgement of this problem, does not teach morality in this way. Most Buddhists or whatever time and place teach some variation on "your actions have consequences for you and the people around you." Cf Buddhanet, The Budddhist Centre (1st sentence in both cases), SEP (§1 sentence 2). The theme recurs in many introductions to Buddhist ethics.

There is a fundamental disconnect between the metaphysics of karma and the metaphysics of paṭicca-samuppāda. I cannot see how to resolve these two while preserving the essential features of both. On the face of it this problem ought to have produced a crisis in Buddhist philosophy, though to the best of my knowledge it never has.


Why Do We Seek a Singularity?

Is it possible to step back from the content of this question and ponder why it is important to frame problem the way it is framed? In other words I want to ask if it is essential to attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable. I said above that writing on the subject of karma assumes that a unified view is intended and can be discovered in the early Buddhist texts. The central historical narrative of Buddhism is that it all springs from a single individual, the Buddha. The Buddha is presented as having first cut his ties to society (i.e. to all the conditioning of his early life from family, clan, class). Then over an extended period he pursues practices designed to break his identification with his body (practices which were historically associated with Jain ascetics). Then, completely cut off from his antecedents, the Buddha produced a new insight (prajñā) and founded a new lineage of instruction (anuśāsana). All Buddhist traditions take their teachings to be the direct or indirect words of the Buddha, if not in his historical manifestation then of the Dharmakāya.

Conventionally we expect that all the lines of the development Buddhist thought ought to converge at some point in the past. We expect the teachings to be unified and systematic. Many scholars of Buddhism declare that, from their point of view, unity implying a founder figure is clear in the texts. However even a relatively obtuse reader becomes aware that all is not unified. There are apparent discontinuities. The twelve nidānas are sometimes ten and sometimes eleven. And sometimes other numbers. I don't know how the tradition dealt with this, but in modern scholarship we have the handy model of evolution. If a teaching exists in various different forms then we can line them up chronologically (if only relatively) and argue that as the Buddha lived 80 years he must have refined his teaching as he went on and what we have preserved are various versions of the teaching from different periods of His "career"; or that it was developed by later disciples. Thus anomalies that might make us question the story of "unity" are used to support it using evolutionary models.

Lately I've been questioning the applicability of the the linear models that result from applying simple Darwinian ideas to the development of Buddhism (see Evolution: Trees and Braids). The tree structure, with its linear, binary diverging leads back in time to a singularity. A braid allows for divergence and convergence that is not unidirectional. Might it be that because the tree metaphor dominates our view of evolution or development that even when we find inconsistencies we still perceive them as springing from a single source? Such a reaction would also be consistent with my theory of how people with strong beliefs handle counter-factual information. 

The fact that we buy into the idea of an historical founder is also a cultural lens. It also predisposes us to see unity if we believe in a founder figure. But which comes first? Do we read widely with an open mind and discover a unity which demands that we accept the idea of a founder figure? Or does the idea of a founder figure cause us to read with confirmation bias and see only unity and ignore and explain away diversity? Is not Buddhism always presented as the teachings of the Buddha? And if our religious beliefs predispose us to believe very strongly in the historical reality? And if we identify him as someone who shares our religious, philosophical and cultural concerns as most modern Buddhists do?

If we extend the image of a braided river and look at the sources of the river we find that many tributaries contribute to the stream. It's not always clear which is the mainstream and which the tributary. If we follow one tributary to source it may resemble a singularity, but we must always keep in mind that there are many tributaries with equal claim. Indeed we can say that each source spring is reliant on a watershed, and that the hydrological cycle recycles water in complex ways. The metaphor is complex, dynamic, and undermined singularity thinking. And since the object is human culture, we require any metaphor to have these qualities.

In my writing about the Buddhist texts, over many years now, I have noted broadly Vedic influences, more specifically Brahmanical influences, Jain influences, animistic influences that I take to come from (one, many, or all of) the Austroasiatic, Dravidian and Tibeto-Burman speaking substrate populations inhabiting the foothills of the Himalayas (before Vedic speaking people even entered India). I've also noted some Iranian and/or Zoroastrian influences, some of which are certain and some speculative. Of course it is always possible that all these influences came together and were synthesised in the person of a founder. Possible, but not very likely. Cultures tend to be assimilated and synthesised by other cultures. And in our case this may well have extended both before and after the time of the putative founder. 

My theory about early Buddhism has two aspects in relation to this problem. Firstly the morality we associate with Buddhism is probably (broadly speaking) the mores of the Śākya tribe. In my writing on the Śākyans (published and unpublished) I have argued that the Buddha and his contemporaries should be seen as representing the culmination of a process of synthesis that began with a group of Iranian tribes migrating into India. They becoming naturalised and then were forced by climate change to migrate again and so ended up on the margins of the kingdoms of Kosala-Videha and Magadha. And, contra Bronkhorst, I argue that Kosala was the cultural centre of gravity of this time and place (it is the setting for the debates with Yājñavalkya in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad for example). Importantly the pan-Indian rebirth eschatology met and was synthesised with the Zoroastrian idea of single destination—Heaven vs Hell—eschatology based on morality. The result was most obviously the various Śrāmaṇa faiths, but there was also considerable influence on Brahmanism outside the Āryavarta as well. As yet no plausible explanation has been put forward for why the Brahmins suddenly became dissatisfied with being reborn amongst their ancestors. However, if eastern, Kosala based, Brahmins were interacting with Zoroastrian influenced tribes, they might have been attracted to an afterlife in an eternal heaven and adapted the idea to their own uses. The earlier appearance of karma in Brahmanical texts simply reflects a predisposition to encapsulating religious ideas in texts that early Śrāmaṇa groups did not share until centuries later.


The Braid of Buddhist Metaphysics.

If there was an influence from Zoroastrian eschatology then it would emphasise the impersonal inevitability of post-mortem judgement, and would suggest post-mortem personal continuity. Personal continuity was already a feature of pan-Indian rebirth eschatology. Thus personal continuity ought to surface as an element in early Buddhist morality since it is present in the substrate belief systems on which Buddhism is built. And this is what we find in the Jātakas. Many aspects of the Jātaka literature, in particular some characters and moral themes, seem to cross sectarian boundaries and reflect shared culture. 

The other aspect of my account of early Buddhism, which is heavily reliant on Sue Hamilton's account of the khandhas, is that paṭicca-samuppāda was initially applied only to the process of having experiences. The basic description is vedanā (from √vid 'to know) arising from contact between sense object, sense organ and sense cognition, and the polarities involved in vedanā in turn giving rise to the mental processes by which we become infatuated and intoxicated with sense experience (papañca). My argument has long been that properly understood paṭicca-samuppāda only applies to this domain of experience. 

However, it is only natural that having discovered a principle like paṭicca-samuppāda that Buddhists would want to see what light it could shed on all aspects of their lives. And after all, as I have pointed out, the impermanence of the world and human life is quite universally acknowledged (Everything Changes, But So What?) My account of early Buddhism predicts that paṭicca-samuppāda applied outside the domain of experience ought to produce metaphysical problems. Thus the principle applied to the sense of self is a powerful lever that can shift our perspective on experience, but when we start to ask whether our self is real or unreal and try to answer in the same terms, we end up with nonsense. Asked if your self exists, later Buddhists are forced to answer both yes and no. And the yes/no answer is still being debated almost 2000 years after it was proposed by Nāgarjuna and his contemporaries (Not Two Truths). The metaphysics of the ontology of the Buddhist self are enormously complex and confusing. The result is some of the most convoluted discourses that end up degrading into insoluble paradoxes and are presented as representing the ineffability of the truth. It's notable that early Buddhist texts which apply paṭicca-samuppāda in the correct domain (visaya) never seem to resort to paradox or convolution in this way. Experience has three salient characteristics: it is impermanent, unsatisfactory, and lacking substance. The experience of selfhood is just another experience, has the same three characteristics, and is subject to the same limitations. Whether or not the self is real is completely irrelevant to the discussion of experience and how to manage it for our well-being. All other ontological questions seem also to be set aside as unanswerable and therefore irrelevant.

In this view the application of paṭicca-samuppāda to an ontological question such as personal continuity, particularly post-mortem, will be unlikely to produce entirely consistent answers. Experience is inherently discontinuous whereas the afterlife requires some kind of continuity. And this leaves us with an unresolvable problem in the area of morality. Considerable ingenuity must be employed to join the Buddhist morality to the principle of paṭicca-samuppāda. It is no coincidence that the question is one that troubles King Milinda. That the first answer never satisfied Buddhists can be deduced from the fact that it has been constantly revisited and reshaped. And even so when teaching morality it was and is common for Buddhists to embrace the idea of personal continuity, as in the Jātakas, for pedagogical reasons.


Conclusion

The kind of dependent continuity proposed by Buddhists as underlying Buddhist morality can hardly motivate people to practice virtue or avoid vice. Without the experience of actions having consequences for oneself, particularly in personal relationships, that Buddhist morality hardly makes sense. Without continuity between actor and the experience of consequence we have no motivation to alter our behaviour. As social animals were keenly attuned to the impact of our behaviour on others and theirs on us. If there were no personal continuity, or even if it were experienced as the kind of nominal continuity that Buddhist theorists propose, then we could not correlate actions and consequences in this life, let alone across lifetimes. Thus, ironically, it is the sense of our self as an entity continuous through time that underlies morality, at least in the unawakened.

Or we could see this as part of a pragmatic program. Morality is best taught with a strong grounding in personal continuity. Morality is concerned with our personal relations and without continuity the word "relations" is meaningless. Approaching morality in this way helps to eliminate major conflicts and prepare the mind for meditation. When it comes to reflecting on the nature of experience in religious exercises designed to liberate us from suffering, its best to point to discontinuity and to emphasise that the sense of self is no different from other experiences. To me this suggests the marriage of two very different activities and modes rather than a unified teaching. 

In fact what we see in the Pāli texts is a sea of partially integrated plurality, in crucial ways irreconcilable, and with a considerable amount of flotsam and jetsam from non-Buddhist systems of thought and practice. This isn't a problem if the Buddhist program is pragmatic rather than systematic. A lot of Buddhists are embracing pragmatism as an antidote to the idea of Buddhism as a systematic tradition. That said a surprising number of pragmatists are highly critical of, for example, teaching mindfulness to people who are anxious or in pain, precisely because it does not fulfil their criteria of Buddhism as a system. In the face of the plurality of doctrine, usually the best we can do is select a subset of the teachings that hang together and gloss over the discontinuities. A dense and complex jargon combined with an anti-intellectual discourse helps us to obfuscate such problems. Even those who study the texts more directly are doing so through cultural and historical lens that predispose them to see unity and continuity and to gloss over evidence of the opposite.

~~oOo~~

For a view on how the Buddhist tradition makes use of eternalism as an argument against nihilism and then mitigates eternalism with a specifically Buddhist argument. See:

Del Toso, Krishna. (2008) 'The Role of Puñña and Kusala in the Dialectic of the Twofold Right Vision and the Temporary Integration of Eternalism in the Path Towards Spiritual Emancipation According to the Pali Nikayas .' Esercizi Filosofici 3, 2008, pp. 32-58. Online academia.edu.

I have some reservations about this article. It is presented in terms of what Gotama taught, e.g. "Gotama makes a dialectical use of Eternalism as means to eliminate Nihilism." which I think is indefensible unless by "Gotama" the author means "the Buddhist tradition" and he does not seem to make this distinction. However the observations about the rhetorical uses of eternalism are very interesting.

Del Toso also refers to:

Hallisey, C. (1996) 'Ethical Particularism in Theravada Buddhism,' Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 3, pp. 32-43.

And in this article Charles Hallisey highlights the Mahāmaṅgala Sutta, which gives a list of desirable practices. Hallisey points out that the list of duties in the sutta and Buddhaghosa's exegesis argue "against any attempt to find a single metaethical principle that would make sense of everything on the list with an account of the occasion on which the canonical text was first taught." Hallisey's point is that although the audience for the text could agree on the auspiciousness of particular acts, they could not identify universal criteria of auspiciousness and Theravāda Buddhist ethics is thus particularist rather than generalist. 

Now see also Ethics and Nonself in relation to the Khandhas. (21.3.2014)

23 Mar 2015: See this short article by Thomas Metzinger on the value of the illusion of continuity for goals and rewards, which I take to be fundamental to morality also.

"As a philosopher, my conceptual point is that only if an organism simulates itself as being one and the same across time will it be able to represent reward events or the achievement of goals as a fulfillment of its own goals, as happening to the same entity. I like to call this the "Principle of Virtual Identity Formation": Many higher forms of intelligence and adaptive behavior, including risk management, moral cognition and cooperative social behavior, functionally presuppose a self-model that portrays the organism as a single entity that endures over time."

Does Karma Break the Rules?

Great Chain of Being

In this essay, I'm going to outline a little quandary that occurred to me recently. It concerns how karma works. Let's begin with the general statement of paṭicca-samuppāda. 

imasmiṃ sati idaṃ hoti,
imass' uppādā idaṃ uppajjati.
imasmiṃ asati idaṃ na hoti, 
imassa nirodhā idaṃ nirujjhati.

This being, that becomes;
on the arising of this, that arises.
This not being, that does not become;
on the cessation of this, that ceases.

As I have noted before (A General Theory of Conditionality) This formula occurs just 14 times throughout the Nikāyas, and not at all in the Vinaya. But it is perhaps the best known of all the formulas related to paṭicca-samuppāda. 

Here we see an example of a grammatical form known as a 'locative absolute' - a participle (sati) and a noun or pronoun (imasmin) both in the locative case. With a present participle, we read this as temporally simultaneous with what comes next. We might translate our phrase 'while this is'. What follows happens, we may say only happens while the first phrase is true. While X exists or is present, then Y exists.  The existence of the entity Y, indicated by a second noun or pronoun is predicated upon the continued presence of the entity X indicated by the first. This is the fundamental equation of conditionality. The conditions have to be present for the dharma to arise.

So far this ought to be all very familiar, if perhaps not with the emphasis on spelling out the implications of the grammar.

Now karma allows for immediate consequences for our actions - the technical term being: kammaṃ diṭṭha-dhamma-vedanīyaṃ 'actions to be experienced in this life'. But generally speaking, karma manifests in whether or not we are reborn and which realm we are born into. That is whether we have a good or bad destination: sugati/duggati after we die (kāyassa bhedā paraṃ maraṇā. M iii.203). 

And here is the problem. Because if a result can only occur when the condition for it is present, and the fruits of actions manifest long after the action was performed then there is a fundamental contradiction. Something is wrong with the equation. Either karma ought to result in immediate and short-lived consequences, or some mechanism other than paṭicca-samuppāda must be invoked to explain it.

This is even more problematic when one considers the passage, which admittedly only occurs once, that equates karma with cetanā or intention. (See also Action and Intention). Cetanā simply does not last. It changes all the time as our attention wanders from object to object. When we say "everything is changing" what we really mean in a Buddhist context is that dharmas are constantly arising and passing away. If the dharma arises, results in a cetanā, that has karmic consequence, but then fades away as the next object comes into view, then how on earth (or in heaven) does karma linger about long enough to affect our rebirth. Indeed how does it haunt us after death?

Historically some solutions have been proposed for this. In Abhidharma and Madhyamaka thought there is a chain of intermediate states which lead from action to consequence. The analogy is that a seed is the condition for a tree, but the seed does not directly result in the tree. It goes through a very large number of infinitesimal increments where each dharma is the condition for the succeeding dharma. This is known as samanantara-pratyaya or the 'immediate antecedent condition' and involves short moments (kṣāṇa) following in succession. The downside of this is that we can never tell what the ultimate condition for any fruit is, even if we know the immediately antecedent condition. Also, it is still difficult to explain how such conditions survive the death of the actor and somehow manifest in another being. It is more difficult again to explain how this fair. After all, if we consciously chose to live very holy lives it hardly seems fair that we are stuck with the consequences of the actions of a now dead being to whom our connection is tenuous at best!

Another solution to this problem is the idea of karmic "seeds" (bīja) which are stored in the ālaya-vijñāna - usually translated as 'storehouse consciousness' though ālaya literally means 'grasp'. In this model, actions produce seeds that ripen at a later date. This helps with the post-mortem problem, but it moves into rather eternalist territory by positing an entity which provides continuity between lives. Of course, the continuity problem is the major stumbling block for the theory of karma. Any attempt to link consequences in this life to actions in a past-life are bound in invoke something like a soul which is the medium of exchange between lives. Something must logically connect me to those actions carried out by a being I never knew and who in the strict sense was not me! And what that something is, generally remains rather vague.

Neither of these two solutions is very familiar to me, nor are they, as I understand them, very satisfactory. I cannot immediately think of a solution based in Pāli terms. It seems to me that without a solution the thread that links actions to consequences must be broken if it is described by paṭicca-samuppāda. I have no problem with not believing in karma or with not seeing paṭicca-samuppāda as a theory of everything, but this seems like an annoying loose end.

So what is the solution to this?

~~oOo~~

On the Nature of Experience

I'VE BEEN READING  a lot of Pāli suttas in Pāli lately and came across an interesting pair: the Uppādā Sutta (A 3.134) and the Paccaya Sutta (S 12.20). They're a pair because they apply two abstract qualities-- dhammaṭṭḥitā and dhammaniyāmatā--to their subjects: the three lakkhaṇas in the first case; dependent arising (paṭiccasamuppāda) and dependently arisen dhammas (paṭicca-samuppannā dhammā) in the second. In cross referencing my notes on the two a reflection flashed into my mind, which I will try to flesh out here.

As always my context is experience. Although the terminology remains a little vague I see dhammas as the objects of the mental sense - arising from mental objects directly, or through the mental objects created when we process sense consciousness arising in relations to sense objects.

S 12.20 is in the Nidāna Saṃyutta, and in Pāli it assumes that we have read and learned S 12.1 where the nidāna chain is spelled out in full. Subsequent suttas of this saṃyutta abbreviate the chain with pe which here means 'etc.' or 'ditto'. Note that here we find the standardised twelve nidānas, so this whole section of the Nikāya represents the mature Canonical thinking with all the wrinkles and differences ironed out. This is just a contextualising comment, not a polemic. It represents a particular stage in the development of this strand of Buddhist thought.

The sutta makes two main points. For reasons of space I will focus on the first, which is that dependent arising is the nidāna chain, and has the form of statements such as 'from the condition of birth, there is ageing and death' (jāti-paccayā jarā-maraṇaṃ). The form and the content of this statement are true if tathāgatas (plural!) arise or not. That is to say the authors believed that this observation is not a special revelation from the Buddha, but a fundamental truth about experience. I would argue that the mature twelve membered nidāna chain introduces some awkwardness into this process because it's become a little more than a model of experience. We have to wonder about the relationship between upādāna, bhava and jāti for instance. But leaving aside metaphysical problems for now, this process of experience is described as:

ṭhitā'va sā dhātu dhammaṭṭḥitā dhammaniyāmatā idappaccayatā

The first part 'this property (sā dhātu) is persistent (ṭhitā eva)...' is relatively straightforward (note that ṭhitā takes a feminine ending so it must be an adjective of dhātu). In the case of birth, everyone born will die. We don't need a Buddha to tell us this. Indeed even the idea that 'everything changes' is not specific to Buddhism. [see Everything Changes but So What?]. The rest of model is not going to be intuited exactly by non-Buddhists, but it's recognisable when explained. In the absence of a Buddha, Western psychologists developed models of experience which are not so different.

The next three terms do need some explanation. But before getting into the individual terms I want to make a comment on the form of this phrase (which itself is actually the second half of a sentence). The last three words are strung together without connectors, which tells us that they are also adjectives related to dhātu. Being a feminine noun, dhātu forces the pronoun (sā) and the adjectives to take feminine endings (-ā) also. It's quite common for the first adjective to precede the noun, and the others to follow it. The dhātu (element, property) is a property of paṭiccasamuppāda, has four characteristics: ṭhita (persistence, stability) and the other three. It will help to reinforce the fact that the context of this phrase that the first half is "whether tathāgatas arises in the world or not". So now to the other three adjectives.

This notion of conditionality is also described as dhammaṭṭhitā. We need to read translations carefully, because other translators do not read this as an adjective of dhātu but as a standalone statement with dhamma (often The Dhamma) as the subject. Hence Bodhi "the stableness of the Dhamma" (p.551). Thanissaro "this regularity of the Dhamma" (ATI). I can't go along with this, and neither does Buddhaghosa who sees dhamma- here as plural i.e. 'mental objects'; and tells us that conditionally arisen dhammas persist with that condition (paccayena hi paccayuppannā dhammā tiṭṭhanti), i.e. as long as the condition persists. Bodhi doesn't often disagree with Buddhaghosa, but here is an example. If we follow Buddhaghosa, and this time I do, then we must read dhammaṭṭhitā as 'the persistence of dhammas [in the presence of their condition].' This makes good sense. Confusingly Buddhaghosa commenting on the parallel phrase at A 3.134 glosses dhamma-ṭṭhitatā with sabhāva-ṭṭhitatā where sabhāva means ‘nature; state of mind; truth, reality’, most likely meaning ‘nature’. I think trying to make sense of this would take us too far from the main theme.

It's worth digressing to ask why two Theravāda bhikkhu's going against the Great Commentator here, to make persistence a quality of The Dhamma rather than of dhammas? Buddhists often want the Dhamma to be something cosmic; not (only) related to the nature of experience, but to the nature of everything. In other words Buddhists want to see Buddhism as providing a Theory of Everything. There are times when Buddhists appear to favour the idea that Buddhism is a revealed rather than an empirical religion, and that paṭicca-smuppāda is a kind of cosmic order to the universe. Perhaps this explains the situation?

We have a similar situation with the next term. Again Buddhaghosa helps as he says that dhammaniyāma refers to the way that the condition constrains the dhammas [that arise] (paccayo dhamme niyāmeti). Again Buddhaghosa uses the plural; and again compare Bodhi: "the fixed course of the Dhamma"; and Thanissaro: "this orderliness of the Dhamma"; both using the singular. Now look at an unrelated passage at M i.259 which explores this quality from the other side:

yaññadeva, bhikkhave, paccayaṃ paṭicca uppajjati viññāṇaṃ tena ten'eva saṅkhaṃ gacchati.
From whatever condition cognition arises, it is known as that kind of cognition.

Pāli Buddhism makes no allowance for synaesthesia: eye forms, and eye faculty only give rise to eye consciousness; never to ear, nose, tongue or body consciousness. This is a constraint (niyāma) of the Buddhist process of cognition. So dhammaniyāmatā refers to this kind of constraint which is a feature of dependently arisen dhammas, rather than a magical quality of The Dhamma. The tendency to translate niyāma as 'order' is one that I'm quite resistant to. Certainly paṭiccasamuppāda does seem to impose constraints (niyāma) on experience in the minds of the authors of this text; and this suggests that experience is to some extent orderly - but such order gives rise to constraints, so dhammaniyāmatā is not a reference to the order itself, though it could seen as assuming a fundamental order.

One little note on this word niyāma: my main source of Pāli is the 1954 Burmese Sixth Council Edition of the Tipiṭaka published (for free) by the Vipassana Research Institute, and it always uses the spelling niyāma. The PTS edition will sometimes have niyama in the same place. VRI modestly report: "The version of the Tipiṭaka which [the 6th council] undertook to produce has been recognized as being true to the pristine teachings of Gotama the Buddha and the most authoritative rendering of them to date."

The last of the four adjectives, idappaccayatā, posses less problem since it is a commonly used and understood term. In fact it is almost synonymous with the previous term. It means that each specific outcome has a specific condition: i.e. birth is the specific condition for ageing and death, while becoming (bhava) is the specific condition for birth. It is probably not significant that A 3.134 leaves this adjective out.

So mature Pāli sutta Buddhism sees this process of dependent arising as quite deterministic: this situation persists, the way that dhammas arise from conditions is always the same, the results are determined by the conditions, and nothing else. They see this process as independent of a living Buddha.

A 3.134 applies this same analysis to the three lakkhaṇas using the well known formulae (c.f. Dhp 277-279):

sabbe saṅkhārā anicca - All experiences are impermanent.
sabbe saṅkhārā dukkha - All experiences are disappointing.
sabbe dhammā anattā - All mental events are insubstantial.

Here saṅkhārā seems to refer to complex constructs of sense object, sense faculty, and sense cognition along with the resulting responses (vedanā, papañca etc.); that is to say [unawakened] experience in it's fullness. All experience, including the first person experience, is just the ephemeral coming together of conditioned processes; and because we fail to grasp this our expectations are distorted and all experience is disappointing; with the arising of experience nothing substantial (attā here in the sense of 'body, form') comes into being. In other words experience has no clear ontological status: 'existent' and 'non-existent' don't apply in this domain (c.f. the Kaccānagotta Sutta. S 12.15). Experience is just experience, nothing less (i.e. not just an illusion), but nothing more. Experience is neither real nor unreal, it is dependently arisen.

If paṭiccasamuppāda describes the nature of experience, then the lakkhaṇas are the consequences of that nature, with an emphasis on the consequences for those unaware of that nature. Our fundamental problem, according to my reading of the Buddhist tradition, is that we don't see the processes clearly, and therefore we don't understand the consequences. The traditional solution to this problem is to pay dispassionate, even minded, close attention to experience to see for ourselves how it actually works; and then to base our responses to sensations on the knowledge we have gained. Flinching from the flame is perfectly reasonable, but usually this is accompanied by stories both gross and subtle which are the dukkha that we cause ourselves. The authors of the Canon saw similar limitations on the processes and the consequences because they are two sides of the same coin.

We don't have to go along with the redactors of the Canon and see the 12 nidānas as the definitive model of experience; we don't have to accept the deterministic spin they put on it; we don't have to go along with modern exegetes deification of The Dhamma; but we can see that there are some useful principles here, and some practical outcomes.

We don't have to throw the baby out with the bath water, but we should be prepared to throw out the bathwater. If I can stretch this metaphor, Buddhists have been very reluctant, on the whole, to pull the plug on the bath, and have opted to just keep on adding more water; so that often the bathtub over-flows, and the baby is in danger of drowning. However in the West we all have indoor plumbing, hot water on tap, and (mostly) modern sewerage - pulling the plug is not such a big deal. Of course if we do pull the plug we are left holding the baby, but the baby will grow into an adult if we nurture it.

The Fivefold Niyāma

THIS TEXT IS ALMOST CERTAINLY one that you have never read before because it comes from the traditional Pāli commentary on the Dīgha Nikāya ascribed to Buddhaghosa (ca. 5th century CE) and as far as I know there is no published translation.

It is interesting to me, and others familiar with Sangharakshita's Dharma teaching, because it is one of the source texts for the five niyāmas, or, more correctly, the fivefold niyāma. Using this list, which is not canonical, but first appears in the commentaries (probably in this commentary), Sangharakshita has painted a picture of conditionality as multi-layered. This is particularly important because it shows how kamma is not the only form of conditionality, and that events may have causes that are nothing to do with our actions. This has become particularly important in the literalistic West, especially under the influence of Tibetan Buddhist teachers who claim, in accordance with their tradition, that everything that happens to us is a result of our actions. This is certainly not the view of the Pāli texts (as discussed in my earlier essay Is Karma Responsible for Everything?). However the lack of translations has made it difficult for people to follow up the sources, and so I offer this one as a start.

Dīgha Nikāya Aṭṭhakathā (2.431)

Commenting on Mahāpadāna Sutta (D 14; PTS D ii.12) [1]: "It is natural [2], bhikkhus, that when a bodhisatta falls [3] from his Tusita (Heaven) form, he enters his mother's belly… this is natural." [4]

BUDDHAGHOSA [5]: says: 'ayamettha dhammatā'—here entering the mothers belly is natural (dhammatā) and is called 'this nature (sabhāva [6]), this certainty (niyāma [7]).' And the five-fold certainty [8] has these names: certainty of actions (kamma-niyāma); certainty of seasons (utu-niyāma); certainty of seeds (bīja-niyāma); certainty of thoughts (citta-niyāma); and the certainty of natures (dhamma-niyāma [9]).

This, 'the giving of pleasant consequences for skilfulness, and unpleasant results for unskilfulness', this is the certainty of actions. There is an illustration. The grounds for this are in the [Dhammapada] verse:

Not in the sky, nor the middle of the ocean,
Nor in a mountain cave;
Though terrified there is nowhere on earth,
Where one might escape from an evil action. [10]

Moreover once a woman quarrelled with her husband and strangled him. Then wanting to die herself she put a noose around her neck. A certain man was sharpening a knife and saw her about to hang herself. Wanting to cut the rope, he ran up to relieve her [calling] 'don't be afraid, don't be afraid.' The rope having become a snake he froze. Frightened he ran. Shortly after the woman died. Thus the danger should be obvious. [11] 

The trees in all the provinces acquire fruit and flowers etc. all at the same time [12]; the wind blowing or not blowing; the quickness or slowness of the sun's heat; the devas sending rain or not; [13] day blossoming lotuses whithering at night; this and similar things are the certainty of seasons. [14] 

From rice seed comes only the rice fruit; from a sweet fruit comes only sweet flavour, and from a bitter fruit comes only bitter taste. This is the certainty of seeds.

From the first aspects of mind and mental events (citta-cetasikā dhammā), to the last, each is conditioned by a condition or precondition (upanissaya-paccayena). Thus that which comes forth from eye-cognition etc. [15] is immediately in agreement [with that cognition]. [16] 

The shaking of the 10,000 world system when the bodhisatta enters his mother's belly and other such phenomena [associated with the life story of the Buddha as told in the Mahāpadāna Sutta], this is called the certainty of natures (dhammaniyāma). Certainty of natures is understood as consisting in this. This was primarily said, bhikkhus, because just this meaning explains dhammatā.

~~oOo~~

Notes

[1] dhammatā, esā, bhikkhave, yadā bodhisatto tusitā kāyā cavitvā mātukucchiṃ okkamati… Ayamettha dhammatā.

[2] Walsh "it is a rule"; or 'it is lawful'. The word dhammatā is an abstract noun from dhamma; so a first parsing suggests it means dhamma-ness. However which meaning of dhamma is being referred to. Translators and commentators agree that it is dhamma as 'nature' (i.e. having a particular nature) as when the Buddha says at his death vayadhamma saṅkhārā 'all constructs are perishable'; i.e. they are of a nature (dhamma) to decay or die (vaya). The text is saying that it is in the nature of things, the nature of the universe that the life events of the Buddha happen as they do. I have no wish to get into the theological debate that necessarily ensues from this statement, I merely wish to establish what the text says, and, following K. R. Norman's dictum, why it says that. If something is in the state of having a nature (dhamma-tā), then that nature (dhamma), is natural (dhammatā) to it. Hence we may translate ayamettha dhammatā as 'this here is natural'.

[3] Men die, but devas living in a devaloka (like Tusita) fall (cavati).

[4] The term dhammatā is then used to describe all the miraculous events of the Buddha's hagiography.

[5] Buddhaghosa is the 5^th Century CE author of this commentary on the Dīgha Nikāya. He was born in Indian but worked in Sri Lanka.

[6] The word sabhāva later becomes a technical term in Mahāyāna Buddhism in its Sanskrit guise svabhāva. Here it just means 'state (of mind), nature, condition.' (PED)

[7] Niyama or niyāma the two are confused in Pāli, can be translated several ways. Obviously here it refers to something which just happens, something which always happens in the life of a Buddha, and which must happen. I focus on the last aspect here.

[8] pañca-vidha niyāma – niyāma 'certainty' is singular, and pañcavidha 'five-fold'.

[9] As we will see the term dhammaniyāma is itself defined in terms of the events described above as dhammatā.

[10] Dhammapada v.127 cited by number only in the text. This is the so-called 'law of kamma' or as here 'the certainty of actions' (see also Attwood 2008). This certainty was eroded as time went on, and eventually the Vajrasattva mantra became a way to circumvent any evil kamma, even the atekiccha: "incurable" or "unpardonable" actions (see also example A iii.146).

[11] As best as I can make out this is a magical allegorical story – the rope turns into a snake to prevent the man from saving the woman from being rescued and therefore rescued from the fate she deserves after having strangled her husband. That is to say that the results of actions are inescapable! See also note 10. above. Presumably the idea of a rope turning into a snake did not seem wholly improbable to the bhikkhu saṅgha.

[12] ekappahāreneva 'with just one blow'

[13] It is curious that modern translators often leave out the notion that it is devas who send the rain – they silently remove this supernatural cause and only allow that it rains.

[14] Sayadaw's (1978) 'caloric order' is clearly wrong in this case. What is intended is cyclic seasonal phenomena: the flowering and fruiting of trees in the same season throughout the land, winds, the heat of the sun at different times of the year, and the day night cycles. Indeed utu (Skt. ṛtu) means 'season, time' and can also refer, for example, to the menstrual cycle. I suppose one must concede that from the modern point of view the phenomena mentioned in the text are all related to the heat gradient in the earth's atmosphere caused by its movement around the sun and the tilt of its axis (which might therefore warrant the term caloric (from the Latin calor 'heat'); however the ancient Indians (even the medieval Sri Lankans) did not think in these terms in the 5^th century. As I note above they see rain as being sent by devas!

[15] Meaning ear, nose, tongue, body and mind cognition.

[16] The point here seems to be the one made in the Mahātaṇhasaṅkhaya Sutta (M 38), i.e. from whatever condition cognition arises it is named after that. The cognition that arises on condition of eye and form is eye-cognition: (yaññadeva, bhikkhave, paccayaṃ paṭicca uppajjati viññāṇaṃ thena teneva saṅkhaṃ gacchati. cakkuñca paṭicca rūpe uppajjati viññāṇaṃ, cakkhuviññāṇan-t-eva saṅkhaṃ gacchati - M i.259). So a contact between eye and form does not give rise to ear cognition (the formula takes no account of synaesthesia). In a sense the point here is the same as the certainty of seeds: you can't have ear cognition from eye contact.

Bibliography

Attwood, Jayarava. 2008. ‘Did King Ajātasattu Confess to the Buddha, and did the Buddha Forgive Him?’ Journal of Buddhist Ethics. Vol. 15.

Ledi Sayadaw 1978. The Niyama-Dipani: The Manual of Cosmic Order.’ in The Manuals of Buddhism, trans. Barua, B. M., Rhys Davids, C. A. F., & Nyana. Bangkok: Magamakut Press. Online: http://www.dhammaweb.net/html/view.php?id=5

Subhuti. 2011. Revering and Relying upon the Dharma: Sangharakshita's approach to Right View. [A glimpse of Sangharakshita's recent thinking on the niyāmas as discussed with and recorded by Dharmacārī Subhuti.]

For more on the niyāmas in the context of the Triratna Buddhist Order see my friend Dhīvan's website.

For my work-in-progress on translating all the texts which mention the niyāmas see : The Fivefold Niyāma. [pdf]